Monthly Archives: September 2003

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s conservative fans have been waiting for Arnold the candidate to sound like Arnold the private citizen. Much of what he has been saying has no doubt been lost in the hubbub over the recall process, but he has not really emerged as the powerful spokesman for free enterprise and unlimited opportunity that we expected to hear. Until now. In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Arnold knocks it out »

I am struck by how much the current liberal hatred of President Bush articulated by Jonathan Chait resembles the previous liberal hatred of President Reagan. Chait entirely avoids any consideration of the possibiltiy that his hatred is symptomatic of underlying liberal sickness by attempting to make the case that the hatred is unique to President Bush. Only this past Sunday, Edmund Morris published a review of the new volume of »

I don’t have much to add to Joshua Scharf’s analysis (posted below by Trunk) of Jonathan Chait’s case for hating Bush. In fact, despite some of Chait’s whoppers, I wouldn’t have had much to say in response to Chait’s case, even in the absence of Scharf’s analysis. I take Chait at his word — he hates President Bush because Bush is unapologetically masculine, unapologetically white-southern, unapologetically well-born, unapologetically not intellectual, »

That many Democrats hate President Bush with a burning, visceral passion is a fact too obvious to be overlooked. The phenomenon of Bush-hatred is striking because it is not just the province of fringe elements on the Left. Democrats claim that their antipathy toward Bush is the mirror image of the revulsion that many on the right felt toward Clinton during the 1990′s, but this claim is disingenuous. The belief »

Bill Whalen in the Daily Standard reports on a second court decision that represents a potential blow to Gray Davis and Cruz Bustamante. A Sacramento superior court has blocked Bustamante from using millions in donations from California’s gambling tribes to finance television ads against Proposition 54, which would ban the state from collecting racial data. Says Whelan, “If the ruling stands, it’s a serious blow to both the No on »

We have been noting for some time the convergence of interest between Baathist terrorists and Democratic politicians, who both want the war in Iraq to go badly for us, and the American news media, who happily oblige both parties by their relentlessly negative coverage. Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall recently returned from Iraq and wrote a much-quoted op-ed in the Atlanta Jounal Constitution in which he asked whether the media’s one-sided, »

Earlier today Northern Alliance Commissioner and radio hero Hugh Hewitt assigned us the task of doing justice to Jonathan Chait’s advocacy of the higher wisdom of Bush hatred in the current issue of the New Republic: “Mad about you: The case for Bush hatred.” Until earlier today Chait’s article was not available online and the current issue of the New Republic had not hit the newsstands yet in Minneapolis. While »

This time it’s an Arabic translator named Ahmad I. al-Halabi, an Air Force enlisted man. Halabi is charged with espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement. It’s good to see, though, that we still aren’t doing any ethnic profiling. »

I heard quite a bit of it over the internet. It didn’t strike me as a very big deal, one way or the other. It was generally consistent with what Bush has been saying about Iraq for a long time: the repressive regime, the need to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the destabilizing tyranny transformed into a harbinger of regional liberation. The speech ended with a call »

The unanimous Ninth Circuit en banc opinion is relatively brief and relies to a substantial degree on the deferential standard of review applicable to appellate review of district court orders granting or denying injunctions, consistent with Judge Kleinfeld’s questioning during the oral argument yesterday. On the merits of the issues the opinion makes all the same points that Judge Kozinski made during the argument. The decision is clearly the one »

The 11-member panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously reversed the three-judge panel’s ruling against the recall vote, and cleared the way for the recall to go forward on Oct. 7. I haven’t seen anything yet on the propositions that also had been scheduled for Oct. 7. This result was of course not unexpected, but it is gratifying to see that it was unanimous. UPDATE: Both the »

The principal financer, organizer and proponent of the recall campaign, Rep. Darrell Issa, has now added to the heat on Tom McClintock by coming out against the recall–sort of. Issa told a San Francisco audience last night that if there are still two Republicans in the race on October 7, Republicans should vote “No” on the recall. “If there are two Republicans in this race when people cast their votes, »

A Jordanian newspaper says that Ezzat Ibrahim, former vice-president of Iraq’s Revolution Command Council, is negotiating with American authorities for terms of his surrender. I haven’t seen any comment yet from the administration. This is reminiscent, obviously, of the report a few days ago that Saddam Hussein was trying to surrender. The administration denied the report, saying we haven’t had any contact with Saddam. »

Hugh Hewitt watched the argument before the en banc Ninth Circuit regarding the California recall election. He predicts that the decision will allow the recall election to proceed on October 7. In fact, Hugh says “a 9-2 or 10-1 vote reversing the three judge panel wouldn’t surprise me. Why? Because not one judge mounted a vigorous defense of the three judges’ reasoning. Not a good sign for them, but a »

If you were invited to speak to a conference of genocidal murderers, what would you do? David Ignatius is a columnist for the Washington Post who doesn’t appear to have agonized much over the question. In his column today — “Hezbollah’s success” — he resolves the question in favor of taking advantage of the opportunity. When invited to speak to a Hezbollah conference in Beirut on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he »

One of the few outposts of political sanity in American’s newspapers is the New York Post’s Page Six. Since Page Six is actually a gossip column, I don’t see it much, but every now and then Mrs. Rocket points out a politically friendly item. Like today, when Richard Johnson comments on Walter Mondale’s interview at a Democratic function: “Former presidential candidate Walter Mondale is proud he favored taxes, rather than »

The story of Wesley Clark’s “imaginary friend” has been oft-told. As recounted in this Weekly Standard piece by Matthew Continetti, “In June, [Clark] told Tim Russert that he had received a phone call on September 11, 2002, from ‘people around the White House’ urging him to publicly link Saddam Hussein to the attacks. Only after his accusation was picked up by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman did Clark go »